No stone left unpunished

Electric shocks, solitary confinement and sleep deprivation. Israel is being accused of mistreating Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones. Harriet Sherwood reports from the West Bank.

By Harriet Sherwood

26 January 2012 — 3:00am

THE room is barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep. The delivery of food through a low slit in the door is the only way of marking time, dividing day from night.

This is Cell 36, deep within Al Jalame prison in northern Israel. It is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old claimed that he had been kept in Cell 36 for 65 days. The only escape is to the interrogation room where children are shackled, by hands and feet, to a chair while being questioned, sometimes for hours.

Palestinian youths throw stones at Israeli soldiers during a protest in Yatta, near Hebron.

Photo: Theresa Ambrose

Most are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers; some, of flinging petrol bombs; a few, of more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons. They are also pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours.

At the beginning, nearly all deny the accusations. Most say they are threatened; some report physical violence. Verbal abuse - ''You're a dog, a son of a whore'' - is common. Many are exhausted from sleep deprivation. Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement. In the end, many sign confessions that they later say were coerced.

These claims and descriptions come from affidavits given by minors to an international human rights organisation and from newspaper interviews. Other cells in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva prisons are also used for solitary confinement, but Cell 36 is the one cited most often in these testimonies.

Advertisement

Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested by Israeli soldiers each year, mostly accused of throwing stones. Since 2008, Defence for Children International has collected sworn testimonies from 426 minors detained in Israel's military justice system.

Their statements show a pattern of night-time arrests, hands bound with plastic ties, blindfolding, physical and verbal abuse, and threats. About 9 per cent of all those giving affidavits say they were kept in solitary confinement, although there has been a marked increase to 22 per cent in the past six months.

Few parents are told where their children have been taken. Minors are rarely questioned in the presence of a parent, and rarely see a lawyer before or during initial interrogation. Most are detained inside Israel, making family visits very difficult.

Human rights organisations say these patterns of treatment - which are corroborated by a separate study, No Minor Matter, conducted by an Israeli group, B'Tselem - violate the international convention on the rights of the child, which Israel has ratified, and the fourth Geneva convention.

Most children maintain they are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused, despite confessions and guilty pleas, says Gerard Horton of DCI. But, he adds, guilt or innocence is not an issue with regard to their treatment.

''We're not saying offences aren't committed - we're saying children have legal rights. Regardless of what they're accused of, they should not be arrested in the middle of the night in terrifying raids, they should not be painfully tied up and blindfolded sometimes for hours on end, they should be informed of the right to silence and they should be entitled to have a parent present during questioning.''

Mohammad Shabrawi from the West Bank town of Tulkarm was arrested last January, aged 16, at about 2.30am. ''Four soldiers entered my bedroom and said, 'You must come with us.' They didn't say why, they didn't tell me or my parents anything,'' he says.

Handcuffed with a plastic tie and blindfolded, he thinks he was first taken to an Israeli settlement, where he was made to kneel - still cuffed and blindfolded - for an hour on an asphalt road in the freezing dead of night. A second journey ended at about 8am at Al Jalame detention centre, also known as Kishon prison, amid fields close to the Nazareth to Haifa road.

After a routine medical check, Shabrawi was taken to Cell 36. He spent 17 days in solitary, apart from interrogations, there and in a similar cell, No.37, he says.

During interrogation, he was shackled. ''They cursed me and threatened to arrest my family if I didn't confess,'' he says. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest and was charged after 25 days. ''They accused me of many things,'' he says, adding that none of them were true.

Eventually Shabrawi confessed to membership of a banned organisation and was sentenced to 45 days. Since his release he is ''now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested''.

Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when he was arrested last January, described similar treatment during arrest and detention. He says he was held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame for 17 days in cells 36, 37 and 38.

''I would start repeating the interrogators' questions to myself, asking myself is it true what they are accusing me of,'' he says. ''You feel the pressure of the cell. Then you think about your family, and you feel you are going to lose your future. You are under huge stress.''

Ali Qadi did not see his parents during the 51 days he was detained before trial, he says, and was allowed to see a lawyer only after 10 days. He was accused of throwing stones and planning military operations, and after confessing was sentenced to six months in prison. Affidavits from six other juveniles say they were detained in solitary confinement in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva. All confessed after interrogation.

''Solitary confinement breaks the spirit of a child,'' says Horton. ''Children say that after a week or so of this treatment, they confess simply to get out of the cell.''

The Israeli security agency (ISA) - also known as Shin Bet - says: ''No one questioned, including minors, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession.''

The Israeli prison service did not respond to a specific question about solitary confinement, saying only ''the incarceration of prisoners … is subject to legal examination''.

Juvenile detainees also allege harsh interrogation methods.

Ali Odwan, from Azzun, says his son, Yahir, who was 14 when he was arrested and is now serving a 23-month term for throwing rocks at vehicles, was given electric shocks by a Taser while under interrogation.

''I visited my son in jail. I saw marks from electric shocks on both his arms; they were visible from behind the glass. I asked him if it was from electric shocks; he just nodded. He was afraid someone was listening,'' Odwan says.

DCI has affidavits from three minors accused of throwing stones who claim they were given electric shocks under interrogation in 2010.

In response to questions about alleged ill-treatment, including electric shocks, the ISA says: ''The claims that Palestinian minors were subject to interrogation techniques that include beatings, prolonged periods in handcuffs, threats, kicks, verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and prevention of sleep are utterly baseless … Investigators act in accordance with the law and unequivocal guidelines which forbid such actions.''

But what of the rare audiovisual recordings, sighted by journalists, of the interrogations of two boys, aged 14 and 15, from the village of Nabi Saleh, the scene of weekly protests against nearby settlers. Both are visibly exhausted after being arrested in the middle of the night. Their interrogations, which begin at about 9.30am, last four and five hours.

Neither is told of his legal right to remain silent, and both are repeatedly asked leading questions, including whether named people have incited them to throw stones. During one of the boy's interrogation, one questioner repeatedly slams a clenched fist into his own palm in a threatening gesture. The boy breaks down in tears, saying he was due to take an exam at school that morning. ''They're going to fail me, I'm going to lose the year,'' he sobs. In neither case was a lawyer present during their interrogation.

Israeli military law has been applied in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory more than 44 years ago. Since then, more than 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been detained under military orders. Under military order 1651, the age of criminal responsibility is 12 years, and children under the age of 14 face a maximum of six months in prison.

However, children aged 14 and 15 could, in theory, be sentenced up to 20 years for throwing an object at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm. In practice, most sentences range between two weeks and 10 months, according to DCI.

In September 2009, a special juvenile military court was established. It sits at Ofer, a military prison outside Jerusalem, twice a week. Minors are brought into court in leg shackles and handcuffs, wearing brown prison uniforms. The proceedings are in Hebrew with intermittent translation provided by Arabic-speaking soldiers.

The Israeli prison service says that the use of restraints in public places is permitted in cases where ''there is reasonable concern that the prisoner will escape, cause damage to property or body, or will damage evidence or try to dispose of evidence''.

In the juvenile military court this month was the case of two boys, aged 15 and 17, who admitted entering Israel illegally, throwing petrol bombs and stones, starting a fire that caused extensive damage, and vandalising property. The prosecution asked for a sentence to reflect the defendants' ''nationalistic motives'' and to act as a deterrent.

The older boy was sentenced to 33 months in jail; the younger one, 26 months. Both were sentenced to an additional 24 months suspended and were fined 10,000 shekels ($A2530). Failure to pay the fine would mean an additional 10 months in prison.

Gerard Horton says a guilty plea is ''the quickest way to get out of the system''. If the children say their confession was coerced, ''that provides them with a legal defence - but because they're denied bail they will remain in detention longer than if they had simply pleaded guilty''.

Nearly all the cases documented by DCI ended in a guilty plea and about three-quarters of the convicted minors were transferred to prisons inside Israel. This contravenes article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention, which requires children and adults in occupied territories to be detained within the territory.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), responsible for arrests in the West Bank and the military judicial system said last month that the military judicial system was ''underpinned by a commitment to ensure the rights of the accused, judicial impartiality and an emphasis on practising international legal norms in incredibly dangerous and complex situations''.

The ISA says its employees act in accordance with the law, and detainees are given the full rights for which they were eligible, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross. ''The ISA categorically denies all claims with regard to the interrogation of minors. In fact, the complete opposite is true - the ISA guidelines grant minors special protections needed because of their age.''

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says if detainees believe they have been mistreated, especially in the case of minors, ''it's very important that these people, or people representing them, come forward and raise these issues. The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors.''

Stone-throwing, he adds, is a dangerous activity that has resulted in the deaths of an Israeli father and his infant son last year.

''Rock-throwing, throwing Molotov cocktails and other forms of violence is unacceptable, and the security authorities have to bring it to an end when it happens.''

Human rights groups are concerned about the long-term impact of detention on Palestinian minors. Some children initially exhibit a degree of bravado, believing it to be a rite of passage, says Horton. ''But when you sit with them for an hour or so, under this veneer of bravado are children who are fairly traumatised.'' Does he think the system works as a deterrent? ''Yes, I think it does.''

Following detention many children exhibit symptoms of trauma: nightmares, mistrust of others, fear of the future, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness, obsessive compulsive behaviour, bedwetting, aggression, withdrawal and lack of motivation.

The Israeli authorities should consider the long-term effects, says Abu Amsha, director of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem. ''They don't give attention to how this might continue the vicious cycle of violence, of how this might increase hatred. These children come out of this process with a lot of anger. Some of them feel the need for revenge.

''You see children who are totally broken. It's painful to see the pain of these children, to see how much they are squeezed by the Israeli system.''